The present invention relates generally to a welding apparatus and, more particularly, to a system to facilitate the assembly of a welding apparatus.
In the construction and assembly of various types of apparatus, the actual assembly of the apparatus is an important factor in the overall cost of the production of the apparatus and, therefore, it is of paramount importance that the cost of assembly procedures and assembly steps be kept to a minimum while still, obviously, providing a quality apparatus that is robust and therefore desirable to the customer.
As such, it is therefore important to facilitate the assembly process of such apparatus to simplify the individual steps that are required by the assembler in the assembly line in order to make those assembly steps as easy to carry out as possible, within the aforementioned guidelines, so as to reduce the cost of manufacturing the apparatus. Since the time that it takes to carry out any particular step in the assembly process is also costly, it is, therefore, of importance to make the assembly of an apparatus require a minimum of manipulations by the assembler and preferably without the use of hand tools or separate fasteners or hardware that is needed to affix a component to the apparatus.
In the case of welding apparatus, there are certain major structural components, and among those are an enclosure that is generally constructed of a metal material such as aluminum and which contains and houses the various components necessary for the overall operation of the welding apparatus. Other structural components include a pair of end panels that are affixed to the ends of the enclosure in order to enclose the interior of the enclosure to contain those components and, therefore, there is a front panel and a rear panel, both of which are generally constructed of a molded plastic material. There is also a base, again generally comprised of a molded plastic material.
In the assembly of the welding apparatus, it is therefore a necessary step to join the molded base to the front and rear panels and the joining together needs to be a strong affixation since that subassembly thereafter can pass on to other stages of the assembly process and must have sufficient integrity to allow the assembler to handle that subassembly without it coming apart and holding up the further assembly. Thus, it is necessary to have a rapid, easy method of assembling, for example, the rear panel to the base that can be readily accomplished by the assembler but which results in a subassembly that is unlikely to inadvertently become detached during the later assembly procedures of the apparatus.
It would also be advantageous for the assembly of a base to a end panel of a welding apparatus, be it the rear panel or the front panel, to minimize, to the extent possible, the number of extraneous parts, such as added hardware, including screws, gaskets, nuts and the like in the assembly process and therefore any steps to better facilitate such assembly would be advantageous in reducing the cost of such manufacture.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a simple means of assembling the front and rear panels to the base of the welding apparatus that provides a strong affixation while minimizing the time and manipulations by an assembler necessary to carry out that assembly.